GUN REGISTRY MISSES THE REAL TARGET

New statistics obtained from the RCMP under the Access to Information Act has revealed a startling increase in the number of persons prohibited from owning firearms in the last five years. On October 8, 2011 the RCMP reported a total of 324,723 persons recorded on CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre) as prohibited from owning firearms. This figure was up from 201,097 as reported to House of Commons on May 12, 2006 – an increase of more than 123,000 firearms prohibition orders over the last five years. “The problem is,” said National Firearms President, Sheldon Clare, “that none of these convicted felons are tracked by the Canadian Firearms Program. Police only know the current addresses of licensed gun owners – not the addresses of criminals determined by the courts to be too dangerous to own firearms.”

This is just the tip of the dangerous persons’ iceberg. In the same release of information, the RCMP reported an additional 177,326 records of persons wanted on Canada wide warrants plus 88,995 records of persons wanted on Province wide warrants. The RCMP also admitted that they do not have statistical information of the number of persons charged with violent offences that are currently out on bail.

Recent Statistics Canada homicide data analyzed by Professor Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser University showed that licensed gun owners are not the real problem. Of 7,720 homicides committed between 1997 and 2009, just 95 (1.25%) were committed with a firearm registered to the accused murderer, and only 151 (1.98%) were committed by a person that held a valid firearms licence. On October 25, National Post columnist Lorne Gunter wrote: “The murder rate among gun owners using a gun is just 0.38 per 100,000 licensed owners, while the overall murder rate in Canada since 1997 has been about 1.85 per 100,000 population.”

“Over the last fifteen years, the Government of Canada has spent more than two billion dollars creating a registry of two million law-abiding people while completely ignoring those who have been determined by the courts to be too dangerous to own firearms. Clare concluded, “Taxpayers should be very concerned because their money has been wasted tracking the most law-abiding people in Canada. Front-line police officers should be the most concerned because they only have a list of addresses for the good guys and nothing to tell them the current whereabouts of the bad guys. In addition to this legislative oversight, the Firearms Act gives police the authority to “inspect” the homes of law-abiding gun owners but not the homes of those most likely to acquire firearms illegally. This didn’t make any sense in 1995 when the Liberals rammed Bill C-68 through Parliament and it make even less sense today now that we have the evidence proving that the Firearms Act has always been aimed at the wrong people. It is incredible that firearms owners are more strictly controlled than sex offenders.”

More background information on this and other Access to Information (ATI) Act requests can be found at the Firearms Facts link on the National Firearms Association website: http://www.nfa.ca/firearms-facts